The members taking part in the proceedings (presided over by a member of the Foreign Office) represented the several interests involved, and in addition Herr v. Kühlmann, then Counsellor of the German Embassy in London, attended as representative of German diplomacy. It was the first time I had met Herr v. Kühlmann, and I had no experience, therefore, of his outlook or mentality. His attitude was curiously interesting and ambiguous. He intervened but seldom in the debates, though, when he did, it was to throw oil on troubled waters and expedite the business on hand, whilst his remarks showed a certain grasp of the questions at issue, which were mostly of a very detailed nature. The general impression he made upon me, however, was one of supreme boredom on his part. His attitude may be described as one of supercilious tolerance and indifference, which puzzled me at the time, but which, in the light of subsequent events, becomes perfectly clear and natural. As an official in the confidence of the German Foreign Office, he was doubtless aware of the intentions of his Government with regard to coming events. It is now known as an established fact that, at the Imperial Conference summoned at Potsdam, on July 5, 1914, at which representatives of German Diplomacy, the Army and Navy, the great Banks, and well-known captains of industry took part, a final decision was taken in favour of war. Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople, gives an account of this Conference as related to him by Baron Wangenheim, his German colleague; and on the subject of the question of responsibility for the war, writes as follows: "My conclusions as to the 'responsibility' are not based on suspicion or belief or the study of circumstantial data. I do not have to reason or argue about the matter. I know. The conspiracy that caused this greatest of human tragedies was hatched by the Kaiser and his Imperial crew at this Potsdam Conference, on July 5, 1914." Every leader and captain of industry evidently had his orders to be in readiness for war, as the result of the decision of the 5th of July. That Herr v. Kühlmann, like others, had confidential information of what was maturing, admits, I believe, of little doubt; and the negotiations at the Foreign Office for the regulation of so small an affair as the navigation of the Mesopotamian rivers, when compared with the issues of peace and war, must indeed have appeared to him as farcical and particularly boring, given his knowledge of their probable aim and purpose. Just as the departure of the Kaiser on his yacht for Norway after the Potsdam Conference was calculated to give the Chancellories of Europe a feeling of confidence, so the meetings in London must have been calculated to lull our Foreign Office into a sense of security.